Page 4 of Ensnared
He stares down at me, one hand at my throat as though he wants to choke the life out of me. Then he growls in disgust and gets off me, shaking out his hand.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I should have told you.”
“You think?” he yells, whirling back to face me. “Gods damn it, Aiden, what the fuck! You’ve been harping on about how we need to keep flying under the radar, how the world is out to get us. Then you bring a fucking witch to our village! Doesanyoneknow what you’ve done?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t want to risk Skye’s safety.”
“Skye’s…” He gapes at me, seemingly incapable of even finishing the thought.
Then he throws his hands up and stalks away from me, back to Jack’s side. His bare feet crunch on the broken bits of the light bulb, and he curses under his breath. The bed dips as he sits next to Jack and puts a hand on his chest.
His expression is so torn, I realize I must have missed something. He and Jack have always been best friends, but now he looks at him with tenderness. Absent-mindedly, he rubs his hair with his other hand.
Skye’s arrival has shaken up the dynamic of our lives more than I’d previously known.
A part of me wants to run after her. She’s disappeared into the cold night, and I want to follow. But if I go now, I’ll break whatever trust is left between Ty and me.
I drag my hand under my nose and wipe the blood on my sweatshirt. Then I feel my broken nose with the tips of my fingers. If I don’t set it now, it’ll heal wrong within minutes, and I’ll have a crooked nose for the rest of my life. It’s nothing less than I deserve, but setting it will be just as much of a punishment.
Sea dragons heal much faster than humans, and being away from emergency care units has always meant we take care of our own scrapes, breaks, and bruises. It’s also impossible for a dragon to go into a human surgery, since a simple blood exam would effectively expose us to the world. But we have a nurse in the village, and in normal circumstances, I’d go to her. I can’t do that now, though, without explaining what happened.
With a deep breath, I put my palms to either side of my nose and pull down. Cartilage grinds over bone, and I cry out as unbelievable pain shoots up my sinuses and through my head.
“Fuck!”
My knees buckle, and I have to lean against the wall to keep from falling over. I expect Ty to smirk at me and tell me it serves me right, but he’s staring at the headboard, his expression thoughtful.
“Her family,” he mutters suddenly.
“What?” I ask.
He turns to me, his face slack with wonder. “She told me her family was traditional. That they didn’t want her working on tech because they thought she should be doing family business. I’d thought they were mobsters or drug lords, but this…” He shakes his head. “It didn’t even cross my mind.”
I want to take a seat next to him and explain everything. Skye has been cast out for being an unskilled witch, or so her family thought. But if our recent experiments and that thirty-foot-tall column of flames tonight was any indication, she just never tapped her full potential. But it’s not my story to tell. If they want to mend the rift between them, she and Ty will have to work things out on their own.
For the first time, I see the fear shining in Ty’s eyes. “Will Jack be okay? What she did to him was intense.”
I consider Jack’s face. His color is a little better, and he’s still breathing evenly.
“I think so. She was pretty out of it a couple of days ago when she overexerted herself, and she likely somehow pulled some of Jack’s energy from him.” I have no idea how that works, but he seems tired, not hurt. And since she said she didn’tdoanything, didn’t cast any spells…
“By the way, how did it happen?” I ask.
Ty opens his mouth, then closes it again. Color rises in his cheeks, and I immediately know what they’d been doing. Why did I even ask? Jealousy spears through me, a hot, unpleasant sensation that twists my insides and curls my lips into a sneer.
“Is that why you two were naked on the beach?” I ask, needing to confirm it.
He groans and drops his face into his hands. “This is so fucked up.”
I sink heavily to the floor, lean my back on the wall, and palm my nose. It has stopped bleeding, and with some luck, it’ll be fully healed in a day or so. I’m still bloody, but I don’t have the energy to get up and clean myself off.
“It’s a mess,” I admit. “And I caused it. I’m sorry for bringing Skye here.”
His gaze snaps up at that. “Yeah, why did you?”
I let my head thump back against the wall. The movement sends a wave of fresh pain through my skull, so I do it again. Maybe I can smack some sense into myself.
“She’s going to put up a protection barrier around the village,” I tell him. “And give us a safe space to use on the internet.”
